Pacific Fishing is published for commercial fishermen and seafood business professionals.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Sports group aims to kill Columbia gillnetting

The Coastal Conservation Association is a front for a part of the recreational fishing industry that has an oar in the water in the current attempt to kill the Columbia gillnet fleet, by both initiative and legislation, with the intent to gain access to the entire non-tribal harvest of Columbia River salmon.

Alaska's experience a warning for gulf

The Gulf of Mexico isn't dead because of BP's oil spill, but fishermen are fearful that a species may disappear from its waters like the Pacific herring did from Alaska's Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Earthquake in Bering Sea

A series of strong aftershocks in Alaska's Aleutian Islands region Sunday followed a powerful earthquake that shook the remote area, but officials said there were no immediate reports of damage or injury.

Banner year in B.C., so why feds' tactics?

It appears to be a cynical back-door approach by Fisheries and Oceans Canada to put pressure on the First Nations community to stop fishing for sockeye, despite a banner return to the Somass River this year.

Another author explains fisheries

Writer Paul Greenberg has been eating fish caught in local waters since he was a kid growing up in Connecticut. Most of the fish he caught himself — but occasionally, he would visit the fishmonger in his hometown and purchase wild fish, fresh from the sea.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Voluntary Chinook catch limits

Two distress calls in Alaska

The Coast Guard responded to two separate distress calls after receiving one from a crewmember from the Homer-based 58-foot fishing vessel Polar Star reporting they were taking on water 65-miles west of Kodiak and another from a crewmember aboard the Seward-based 38-foot charter vessel Aurora reporting smoke in their engine room 10 miles southeast of Seward Tuesday morning.

End sockeye impasse in B.C.

Fairweather surveying Arctic

Responding to a request from the U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, Alaska Maritime Pilots, and the commercial shipping industry, NOAA sent one of its premier surveying vessels, NOAA Ship Fairweather, to detect navigational dangers in critical Arctic waters that have not been charted for more than 50 years.

Chefs to visit Cordova

Cordova will serve as home base as a group of chefs from the nationally acclaimed Oceanaire Seafood Room tours the region, visits with fishermen processors and managers, and learns about salmon and other seafood harvested from the Copper River and Prince William Sound region.

Feds to study Unalaska eagle complaints

Bald eagles line up like hoodlums along light poles in Unalaska, their heads shrugged into their shoulders, eyes scanning for food. They careen off cliffs, perch on bridges and playground equipment, and tussle over the leftover fish bits in beached nets.

NOAA ship charting Bering

The Fairweather is spending July and August examining sea floor features, measuring ocean depths and supplying data for updating NOAA's nautical charts spanning 350 square nautical miles in the Bering Straits around Cape Prince of Wales.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Bristol Bay fishermen get 95 cents

Commercial fishermen in the famed Bristol Bay wild Alaska sockeye salmon fishery were heading home in late July with smiles on their faces, warmed by base prices averaging 95 cents a pound for the 28 million reds netted.

Natives interrupt California protected area hearing

North Coast tribal members again forced leaders of a meeting on the controversial Marine Life Protection Act in Fort Bragg to listen to American Indian concerns about infringing on traditional gathering.

Bobby T. ticketed

Alaska fishing's death rate is lower

A new federal report says safety interventions addressing specific hazards in Alaska have resulted in a significant decline in the commercial fishing fatality rate, but more preventive measures are still needed in high risk fisheries.

Prof challenges plankton theory

A new NASA-supported analysis published in the journal Ecology by Michael Behrenfeld, a botany professor at Oregon State University and a leading international expert in using remote sensing technology to examine ocean productivity, challenges a long-standing theory about the growth of phytoplankton in the world's oceans.